It has previously been difficult to identify and retrieve selected moving picture, video or still images from a collection of image frames without human viewing of each of the frames to determine its content. As a result, retrieval of such images can be extremely time-consuming.
Another alternative is that the collection of images can be reviewed and provided with hand annotated designations as to the content of the images. However, the annotations must be entered on another media and further complicates the indexing of the data already accumulated in the images.
Moreover, while previous compression techniques can compress the image data, the compression techniques are often unrelated to the contents of the images and thus may not maximize the compression of the data. As a result, the compression does not minimize the storage or provide any information about content.